[Faith-talk] One of my sermons

[Poppa Bear]

Message for Saturday March 27th preached at Grace Baptist Temple. 

Let us take a trip back in time, let us put ourselves in the shoes of one of
the children of Israel as they stand before the promise land. This land was
a sacred land, based on a promise that had been given to the Patriarch
Abraham almost 5 hundred years earlier. Over that 500 years every Jew had
been told about this promise land, a land that would be flowing with milk
and honey. We get the term land of milk and honey from the concept, or idea
of complete abundance. The land was so fertile and the vegetation was so
abundant that bees could produce the best honey and produce it all day and
the idea of milk comes from the fact that the pastures were so luscious that
the cows could produce the creamiest milk and butter that could be dreamed
of. If any of you have traveled to that part of the world then you will know
that the land of the Sinai desert is a hard task master, dessert, drought,
sparse vegetation, snakes scorpions and the idea of a land of milk and honey
was like a dream, it would have been like heaven on earth in the imagination
of these people, I guess in some ways it was kind of like the bush, harsh
winds, harsh unpredictable conditions at times and full of lots of
challenges. Through a series of events these Jews were put into captivity
and served as slaves for hundreds of years in the land of Egypt, God raised
up the profit Moses. Moses led the people out of Egypt in a spectacular way;
there were 10 series of plagues that happened to the land of Egypt that
pretty much decimated the lives of the Egyptians as God poured out his
judgment on Egypt. Things had been done in their land that had never been
seen in all the world, their economy was destroyed, their live stock were
destroyed, their health was affected, their religions, because even their
idles were toppled over and finally the angel of death took the first born
from each Egyptian home in the land. Among the people of the Jews that
witnessed all of these things was a young man named Joshua. The first time
that we here about Joshua is in the book of Exodus, he was one of the twelve
men sent into the promise land as a spy to survey it, to bring back a report
to the elders of Israel. Ten of the men who came back from the land to give
a report basically said, "We can never take that land, they have armies,
fortified cities and there's even giants." The report of these ten men
filled all of the people and leaders with fear and then that fear led to
complaining and then finally bitterness towards Moses and ultimately God.
Now Joshua and another young man named Caleb had a different perspective.
They didn't see the giants, the fortified cities with the tall brick walls
and soldiers, they saw everything that god had promised, they saw the land
of milk and honey, the land that God had been promising them for hundreds of
years, They saw it all through eyes of faith, It wasn't just a bedtime story
that parents told the children, it wasn't just the place that they imagined
as they sat around the fire place smoking their peace pipes, the land was
really there, they are at the edge of this land, they could throw a rock and
hit the land. The men had even brought back something from the land; they
brought back a cluster of grapes that was so big that two men had to carry
the fruit between poles. It was bigger and better than they could imagine, I
mean, you imagine how much wine they could make with those grapes? But still
the people were stricken with terror. Now remember, they had just saw an
entire Egyptian army that was breathing down their necks swallowed up by the
red sea, they had just celebrated and danced a jig to that momentous,
miraculous deliverance, they wrote a song, had a BBQ, they were pumped up,
it was like they had one the super bowl. But look at what they say. In
numbers 13: 27 and 28, then they told him, and said: "We went to the land
where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its
fruit. 28 Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the
cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak
there.  So they say, yeh, the land is good, but. Oh, there's the but, Isn't
there always a smelly but that has to ruin everything? There back to their
dirty diapers of fear and faithlessness. Get this, Caleb; he still tries to
get them to see through eyes of faith though, just three verses down in
Numbers 14: 30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, "Let us
go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it."

31 He said, we got this, you see the size of that fruit we brought back from
the land, and then, wait, before Caleb can go on, what do we have again as
we continue the verse, But the men who had gone up with him said, "We are
not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we." 32 And
they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had
spied out, saying, "The land through which we have gone as spies is a land
that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men
of great stature. See, I'm confused, I know that Caleb and Joshua were
confused, didn't the Lord God just make a freeway right through the middle
of a sea, didn't the Lord God just drown the Egyptian army, one of the
finest armies on earth at the time, didn't he just drown them like little
toy soldiers in a bath tub? So now God, he has something to say, he says ok,
you want to grumble, complain, and doubt me? Then none of the generation of
adults 40 and up will enter the promise land. The needle has slid off the
record, the brakes are slammed, and the wind has left the sale. Let me stop
and point something out, sometimes God will carry us, spoon feed us, change
our diapers and walk with us right to the door of the school bus and say,
ok, get on the bus now it's time for you to go to school and become a person
who starts to grow into a fully functioning adult. But when the child
doesn't get on the bus, throws himself down on the ground and says, I can't
do it, the bus is too big, the driver looks scary, then God says, ok, you're
going to have to walk. He goes back in the house and shuts the door and
peeks out the window and watches what you're going to do. This is what the
children of Israel did, they threw their selves on the ground and through a
fit and not only through a fit; they started complaining about how unfair
God was. Get this, they said that they would rather go back to being slaves
in Egypt; they would rather go back to bondage, go back to diapers. God had
prepared these people to sore on wings like eagles, to be the princes of a
vast fertile land, He handpicked one man, Abraham and carefully kept him and
multiplied his off spring, his children until the children of Abraham became
not just a son and grandson, but twelve brothers who became the twelve
tribes of Israel and then from there he multiplies them into millions, then
brings them right up to the door of the promise land. Was God being unfair
to the nation of Israel when he said, that nobody over 40 is going in? No,
the adults should have been the ones leading the march into the promise
land, they should have been encouraging the young adults, and there should
have been rejoicing. Now, Out of the whole nation, a nation of millions, how
many over the age of forty were told that they would enter the promise land?
Yep, two people. It kind of reminds me of the flood, how many people got
into the ark when the door shut? Don't think that God grades on a curve, you
are either in the boat or out, you're on one side of the volley ball net or
the other, you can't sit on the fence, you are in the sheep gate and belong
to the Sheppard or you're a goat. Young Caleb and Joshua were the only two
that were allowed to enter into the promise land from their generation.

Ok, what separated these two men from the hundreds of thousands that would
not be entering the promise land? Well, one group of people were living by
faith while the other group was living by fear. Faith and Fear, these two
attitudes will make all of the difference in our Spiritual lives and our
physical lives; they will even affect our jobs and relationships. Let us
look at fear and as we do, we will contrast it with faith. I think that the
biggest problem with fear is that we don't want to get out of our comfort
zones, we're scared to venture out of our little glass bubbles. Even if the
comfort zone that we live in is a jail cell. The children of Israel were in
bondage, slaves for 400 years. They were whipped beaten, their children were
murdered as soon as they came out of the womb and if not then, then soon
after, but still, they continually cry out to each other and Moses, "Why did
we ever leave Egypt. Did they forget the scars on their backs; did they
forget that their wives still marked the birthdays of their murdered
children? This is how ludicrous fear is though, it will cause us to want to
stay in the most horrifying, degrading and brutal situation rather than
venture out to find freedom. Look at the abused woman, years of black eyes,
cracked ribs; verbal beat downs and still stays. Now, what does faith look
like, faith says, I am not sure that I can do this, but I have hope that I
can, I have hope that this person, in this case, God himself will deliver
me, will keep his word. We say, well I'm scared to trust God, you know, that
is the case sometimes, but most of the time it's not. We all to often just
want what we want and don't want to have to let our idols go, so it comes
down to a matter of inconvenience to trust God, not fear. You say, I'm
scared to trust God!" That's why you don't get up with your children to come
to church on Sunday? It's not because you stayed up until 2:00 AM watching
Godless movies? God isn't a big dummy in the sky; he sees all of the
excuses. Now let me say, there are natural fears, you see it in children,
their 5 years old and you take them to Chucky cheese and they scream in
terror that's normal, but if their 15 years old and they're still screaming
when they see Chucky Cheese then they may need counseling. I say that to say
that, sometimes we just need to grow up. If we want to try and continue to
live like we are teenagers when we are adults, in your 20's, 30's 40's and
up and you still act like you did in Junior high then you have more than
likely rejected God's truths at every turn of your life and done it
intentionally. The reason I say this is because as you encounter God's truth
and grab it instead of push it away, then you will mature, you will grow
wise. Here is a quick test to find out what side of the fence you may be on,
Proverbs 10 verse 8 says, 8 "The wise in heart accept commands, but a
chattering fool comes to ruin. Is it hard for you to listen to instruction,
are you always rebelling against good advice, God, your parents, your
spouse? And your speech, Do your words carry any substance or do you just
chatter like some meaningless noise, like a parakeet, chirping away, never
saying anything of value? When I talk about immaturity I am not talking
about being childlike, that is a beautiful quality to have, it is one of my
greatest things to witness when I run into a person who still posses that
quality, my grandma as she becomes older, she has this childlike joy, trust
and peace that just makes me smile. I am talking about being childish, if
you don't know what I mean, just watch a teen ager for a while, if your
behavior, habits and emotions are on their level then you may need to take
inventory of your life. You see, a life of faith is a beautiful thing, but
we need to let go of the idols, break the glass bubble, stop living in some
teenage dream, stop looking back at Egypt like it ever did you a favor. Let
your life stretch out towards the Love of God, towards the Cross, his
forgiveness and his strength. God wants you to be free, courageous and walk
with him every day of your life and grow in faith and wisdom and know what
it is to enter into His promise land. 

Now, remember this, all of us have a promise land in front of us, now
listen, don't turn it into some imaginary cross that weighs you down. Don't
act like his blessing is some great Burdon that you can hardly carry.
Because you know what will happen, he will take that opportunity away and
put you into the crucible, into the refiners fire to be tried, that's what
he had to do with the children of Israel, they cried out, we want to go
back, this land is too much for us, we can't possibly take it, but God mint
it to be a blessing. Are you a parent who is treating their child like some
kind of heavy weight, like some cross that you just have to carry around, be
careful, repent, put your heart before God and get right, has he gives you a
job, a spouse, and you walk around as if your being crucified and afflicted,
be careful that he doesn't just take that blessing away and put you into the
refiners fire. Children are a gift, spouses, parents, jobs they are all
blessings, opportunities to share the love of Christ. My prayer for all of
us is that instead of crying out to go back to Egypt, we would cry out to
God and say, help my unbelief! Give me wisdom, help me to be courageous and
step into the promise land of my life.